18.4.3 Inter-relationships within regions and sectors

Considering the details of specific adaptation and mitigation activities at the level of regions and sectors shows that adaptation and mitigation can have a positive and negative influence on each other’s effectiveness. The nature of these inter-relationships (positive or negative) often depends on local conditions. Moreover, some inter-relationships are direct, involving the same resource base (e.g., land) or stakeholders, while others are indirect (e.g., effects through public budget allocations) or remote (e.g., shifts in global trade flows and currency exchange rates). This section focuses on direct inter-relationships. Broader inter-relationships between adaptation and mitigation are discussed in other parts of this chapter and in Chapter 20 related to sustainable development.

Mitigation affecting adaptation

Land-use and land-cover changes involve diverse and complex inter-relationships between adaptation and mitigation. Deforestation and land conversion have been significant sources of greenhouse-gas emissions for decades while often resulting in unsustainable agricultural production patterns. Abating and halting this process by incentives for forest conservation and increasing forest cover would not only avoid greenhouse-gas emissions, but would also result in benefits for local climate, water resources and biodiversity.

Carbon sequestration in agricultural soils offers another positive link from mitigation to adaptation. It creates an economic commodity for farmers (sequestered carbon) and makes the land more valuable by improving soil and water conservation, thus enhancing both the economic and environmental components of adaptive capacity (Boehm et al., 2004; Butt and McCarl, 2004; Dumanski, 2004). The stability of these sinks requires further research, and effective monitoring is also a challenge.

Afforestation and reforestation have been advocated for decades as important mitigation options. Recent studies reveal a more differentiated picture. Competition for land by mitigation projects would increase land rents, and thus commodity prices, thereby improving the economic position of landowners and enhancing their adaptive capacity (Lal, 2004). However, the implications of reforestation projects for water resources depend heavily on the species composition and the geographical and climatic characteristics of the region where they are implemented. In regions with ample water resources even under a changing climate, afforestation can have many positive effects, such as soil conservation and flood control. In regions with few water resources, intense rainfalls and long spells of dry weather, forests increase average water availability. However, in arid and semi-arid regions, afforestation strongly reduces water yields (UK FRP, 2005). This has direct and wide-ranging negative implications for adaptation options in several sectors such as agriculture (irrigation), power generation (cooling towers) and ecosystem protection (minimum flow to sustain ecosystems in rivers, wetlands and on river banks).

Bioenergy crops are receiving increasing attention as a mitigation option. Most studies, however, focus on technology options, costs and competitiveness in energy markets and do not consider the implications for adaptation. For example, McDonald et al. (2006) use a global computed general equilibrium model and find that substituting switchgrass for crude oil in the USA would reduce the gross domestic product (GDP) and increase the world price of cereals, but they do not investigate how this might affect the prospects for adaptation in the USA and for world agriculture. This limitation in scope characterises virtually all bioenergy studies at the regional and sectoral scales, but substantial literature on adaptation-relevant impacts exists at the project level (e.g., Pal and Sharma, 2001; see Section 18.5 and Chapter 17).

Another possible conflict between adaptation and mitigation might arise over water resources. One obvious mitigation option is to shift to energy sources with low greenhouse-gas emissions such as small hydropower. In regions where hydropower potentials are still available, and also depending on the current and future water balance, this would increase the competition for water, especially if irrigation might be a feasible strategy to cope with climate-change impacts in agriculture and the demand for cooling water by the power sector is also significant. This reconfirms the importance of integrated land and water-management strategies to ensure the optimal allocation of scarce natural resources (land, water) and economic investments in climate-change adaptation and mitigation and in fostering sustainable development.

Hydropower leads to the key area of mitigation: energy sources and supply, and energy use in various economic sectors beyond land use, agriculture and forestry. Direct implications of mitigation efforts on adaptation in the energy, transport, residential/commercial and industrial sectors have been largely ignored so far. Yet, to varying degrees, energy is an important factor in producing goods and providing services in many sectors of the economy, as outlined in the discussion about the importance of energy to achieve the Millennium Development Goals in the WGIII AR4, Chapter 2 (Halsnaes et al., 2007). Reducing the availability or increasing the price of energy therefore has inevitable negative effects on economic development and thus on the economic components of adaptive capacity. The magnitude of this effect is uncertain. Peters et al. (2001) find that high-level carbon charges (US$200/tC in 2010) affect U.S. agriculture modestly if they are measured in terms of consumer and producer surpluses (reductions by less than half a percent relative to baseline values). However, the decline of net cash returns is more significant (4.1%) and the effects are rather uneven across field crops and regions. Recent studies on the implications for adaptation (capacity and options) indicate that such changes may imply larger policy shifts; for example, towards protection of the most vulnerable (Adger et al., 2006).

The most important indirect link from mitigation to adaptation is through biodiversity, an important factor influencing human well-being in general and the coping options in particular (see MEA, 2005). After assessing a large number of studies, IPCC (2002) concluded that the implications for biodiversity of mitigation activities depend on their context, design and implementation, especially site selection and management practices. Avoiding forest degradation implies in most cases both biodiversity (preservation) and climate (non-emissions) benefits. However, afforestation and reforestation may have positive, neutral or negative impacts, depending on the level of biodiversity of the ecosystems that will be replaced. By using an optimal-control model, Caparros and Jacquemont (2003) find that putting an economic value on carbon sequestered by forest management does not induce much negative influence on biodiversity, but incentives to sequester carbon by afforestation and reforestation might harm biodiversity due to the over-plantation of fast-growing alien species.

These studies demonstrate the intricate inter-relationships between adaptation and mitigation, and also the links with other environmental concerns, such as water resources and biodiversity, with profound policy implications. The land-use and forestry mitigation options in the Marrakesh Accords may provide new markets for countries with abundant land areas but may alter land allocation to the detriment of the landless poor in regions where land is scarce. They present an opportunity for soil and biodiversity protection in regions with ample water resources but may reduce water yields and distort water allocation in water-stressed regions. Accordingly, depending on the regional conditions and the ways of implementation, these implications can increase or reduce the scope for adaptation to climate change by promoting or excluding effective, but more expensive, options due to increased land rents, by supporting or precluding forms and magnitudes of irrigation due to, for example, higher water prices.

Adaptation affecting mitigation

Many adaptation options in different impact sectors are known to involve increased energy use and hence interfere with mitigation efforts if the energy is supplied from carbon-emitting sources. Two main types of adaptation-related energy use can be distinguished: one-time energy input for building large infrastructure (materials and construction), and incremental energy input needed continuously to counterbalance climate impacts in providing goods and services. Furthermore, rural renewable electrification can have both huge emissions implications (WEA, 2000) and adaptation implications (Venema and Cisse, 2004).

The largest amount of construction work to counterbalance climate-change impacts will be in water management and in coastal zones. The former involves hard measures in flood protection (dykes, dams, flood control reservoirs) and in coping with seasonal variations (storage reservoirs and inter-basin diversions), while the latter comprises coastal defence systems (embankment, dams, storm surge barriers). Even if these construction projects reach massive scales, the embodied energy, and thus the associated greenhouse-gas emissions, is likely to be merely a small proportion of the total energy use and energy-related emissions in most countries (adaptation-related construction comprises only a small part of total annual construction, and the construction industry itself represents a small part in the annual energy balances of most countries).

The magnitude and relative share of sustained adaptation-related energy input in the total energy balance depends on the impact sector. In agriculture, the input-related (CO2 in manufacturing) and the application-related (N2O from fields) greenhouse-gas emissions might be significant if the increased application of nitrogen fertilisers offers a convenient and profitable solution to avoid yield losses (McCarl and Schneider, 2000). Operating irrigation works and pumping irrigation water could considerably increase the direct energy input, although, where available, the utilisation of renewable energy sources on-site (wind, solar) can help avoid increasing greenhouse-gas emissions.

Adaptation to changing hydrological regimes and water availability will also require continuous additional energy input. In water-scarce regions, the increasing reuse of wastewater and the associated treatment, deep-well pumping, and especially large-scale desalination, would increase energy use in the water sector (Boutkan and Stikker, 2004). Yet again, if provided from carbon-free sources such as nuclear desalination (Misra, 2003; Ayub and Butt, 2005), even energy-intensive adaptation measures need not run counter to mitigation efforts.

Ever since the early climate impact studies, shifts in space heating and cooling in a warming world have been prominent items on the list of adaptation options (see Smith and Tirpak, 1989). The associated energy requirements could be significant but the actual implications for greenhouse-gas emissions depend on the carbon content of the energy sources used to provide the heating and cooling services. In most cases, it is not straightforward to separate the adaptation effects from those of other drivers in regional or national energy-demand projections. For example, for the U.S. state of Maryland, Ruth and Lin (2006) find that, at least in the medium term up to 2025, climate change contributes relatively little to changes in the energy demand. Nonetheless, the climate share varies with geographical conditions (changes in heating and cooling degree days), economic (income) and resource endowments (relative costs of fossil and other energy sources), technologies, institutions and other factors. Such emissions from adaptation activities are likely to be small relative to baseline emissions in most countries and regions, but more in-depth studies are needed to estimate their magnitude over the long term.

Adaptation affects not only energy use but energy supply as well. Hydropower contributed 16.3% of the global electricity balance in 2003 (IEA, 2005) with virtually zero greenhouse-gas emissions. Climate-change impacts and adaptation efforts in various sectors might reduce the contribution of this carbon-free energy source in many regions as conflicts among different uses of water emerge. Hayhoe et al. (2004) show that emissions even in the lowest SRES (IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios; Naki?enovi? and Swart, 2000) scenario (B1) will trigger significant shifts in the hydrological regime in the Sacramento River system (California) by the second half of this century and will create critical choices between flood protection in the high-water period and water storage for the low-flow season. Hydropower is not explicitly addressed but will probably be affected as well. Payne et al. (2004) project conflicts between hydropower and streamflow targets for the Columbia River. Several studies confirm the unavoidable clashes between water supply, flood control, hydropower and minimum streamflow (required for ecological and water quality purposes) under changing climatic and hydrological conditions (Christensen et al., 2004; VanRheenen et al., 2004).

Possibly the largest factor affecting water resources in adaptation is irrigation in agriculture. Yet studies in this domain tend to ignore the repercussions for mitigation as well. For example, Döll (2002) estimates significant increases in irrigation needs in two-thirds of the agricultural land that was equipped for irrigation in 1995, but she does not assess the implications for other water uses such as hydropower and thus for climate-change mitigation.

In general, adaptation implies that people do something in addition to or something different from what they would be doing in the absence of emerging or expected climate-change impacts. In most cases, additional activities involve additional inputs: investments (protective and other infrastructure), material (fertilisers, pesticides) or energy (irrigation pumps, air-conditioning), and thus may run counter to mitigation if the energy originates from greenhouse-gas-emitting sources. Changing practices in response to climate change offer more opportunities to account for both adaptation and mitigation needs. Besides the opportunities in land-related sectors discussed above, new design principles for commercial and residential buildings could simultaneously reduce vulnerability to extreme weather events and energy needs for heating and/or cooling. Nonetheless, there are path dependencies from past technology choices and infrastructure investments.

In summary, many effects of adaptation on greenhouse-gas emissions and their mitigation (energy use, land conversion, agronomic techniques such as an increased use of fertilisers and pesticides, water storage and diversion, coastal protection) have been known for a long time. The implications of some mitigation strategies for adaptation and other development and environment concerns have been recognised recently. As yet, however, both effects remain largely unexplored. Information on inter-relationships between adaptation and mitigation at regional and sectoral levels is rather scarce. Almost all mitigation studies stop at identifying the options and costs of direct emissions reductions. Some of them consider indirect effects of implementation and costs on other sectors or the economy at large but do not deal with the implications for adaptation options of sectors affected by climate change. Similarly, in most cases, climate impact and adaptation assessments do not go beyond taking stock of the adaptation options and estimating their costs, and thus ignore possible repercussions for emissions. One understandable reason is that adaptation and mitigation studies are already complex enough and expanding their scope would increase their complexity even further. Another reason may well be that, as indicated by the few available studies that looked at these inter-relationships, the repercussions from mitigation for adaptation and vice versa are between adaptation and mitigation might be significant but, in most other sectors, the adaptation implications of any mitigation project are small and, conversely, the emissions generated by most adaptation activities are only small fractions of total emissions, even if emissions will decline in the future as a result of climate-protection policies.